Yes, that road is open to drive and the corner of forest area in the section I'm referring to is not big. But, you need to hunt that from the south because of a stipulation that we were made aware of from the NP park ranger halfway through my hunt. If your going after buffalo by first walking through the national park lands, the buffalo need to be on US forest land first. The Grand Teton ranger we worked with was all for us hunting and using NP lands to access forest, but the buffalo had to be on USFS lands prior to us walking across NP lands. Seems silly but that's what the rules where at the time so ok that's what we'll do. People driving through the Elk Meadows areas just kept those small groups of bulls up on the ridges and would push those bulls near these small pockets of USFS land.
In the bison regs packet it said all bison killed on USFS land had to be packed out on USFS lands. Well on the small corner areas near the major visitor roads NP would give us permission to take a buffalo out through NP lands, but it had to be whole so it would be removed as quickly as possible. Maybe NP didn't want park visitors watching hunters butcher a buffalo up into 12 pieces and packing it out over a period of a couple days. I thought this was pretty cool, but like I said, you need to go meet a NP ranger first, get their contact information if you get in a bind or need help determining a boundary you can call them. The lower end of Spread Creek where the road is is all USFS but those bison would stay a healthy distance north of Spread Creek out in the sagebrush and aspen ridges on NP land. If they crossed Spread Creek it was in the dark early early morning hours.
These tag-n-drag services have these rangers on speed dial...believe me. I was waiting for 3 bulls to walk onto USFS land for 3 hours one afternoon as they were napping within 30 yards of the boundary. The NP ranger said, you can go when they walk onto USFS land....great, ok. Well word got out about the bulls and guess who shows up, one of the outfitting services with a client...great, this is going to be ##### show now. So the guide/outfitter is a hungry bastard right, suddenly decides he's the one calling the shots cause his client is paying big money...whatever, lets just go when he bulls hit the USFS land. An hour later, ok, bulls are up and walk into legal ground, now, all 3 of us go. Bulls see us and walk 10-20' inside the legal boundary. Well this sucks I'm thinking. So now you got these 3 bulls way to close to the boundary and quartering away walking down the USFS boundary. They finally turn just a little bit and the outfitter says shoot to his hunter...I'm think F that, 2000# bull within feet of the boundary...he shoots the lead bull on a hard quartering shot and hits way too high with a 7 mag. I pass on the others... The bull walks back onto NP land and stops 20 yards into park lands...this is where it got funny...client asked his guide...should I shoot..no..he says.. bull is on NP lands. No #####, within seconds this outfitter has the NP ranger on his cell phone and within 20 minutes 2 rangers showed up and they went tracking this bull through the park with the rangers leading the way packing .45's...for buffalo.. Remember, if you shoot one on USFS land and they walk back onto NP land, you cannot go recover them without a NP ranger with you even if they fall within sight. Me, I unloaded my rifle, went and got back in my truck and went back to looking for buffalo. LOL...next day these two yahoos are riding horses through Grand Teton NP looking for his bull and a ranger is following them on the nearest road in a vehicle.. Four days later 3 more bulls showed up in the same spot. I arrived at 5:30 in the morning, a really nice lady and her husband arrived at 4:30. We went in at first light and the bulls were 100 yards on forest. I let her go the last 50 yards and she got a nice 5 year bull. I gave them the NP ranger info, he showed up in about an hour and let them drag the bull out whole across NP a half mile to Spread Creek.
Like I said, this turns into a boundary hunt this time of year. I tried like hell to get one on USFS land, but in the end if you can find one on any legal area its a win. I killed mine by riding horses across the Gros Ventre on the very northern portion of the refuge once they moved down overnight one day and caught him moving back towards the NP boundary. All the cows were still west of Kelly in the park. I was able to avoid the major ##### show that occurs when the buffalo are smack dab in the middle of the refuge thank goodness and actually had a really enjoyable hunt on the northern portion of the refuge, however I couldn't be very selective on the bull I wanted to shoot, for me, the time that ended up being involved, I took the first shot I got after 12 days.
Urge 2 Hunt
